to have married then. But there was another reason, and a better one. Stephen . . . I dreaded an anti-climax. And it would have been that. After loving you all my life, all my youth, to have married you at sixty . . . it seemed to me a desecration. I hoped for a dear friendship with you. It was that I longed for. But you were angry and hurt. You left me. I thought you would be gone six months, or possibly a year. You were away nearly twenty years! . . . Oh, Stephen! . . ."
His eyes begged her forgiveness.
"I always tried to think that you were right, Claire," he said softly. "Right or wrong, it all belongs to the past now. So does my loneliness. I have been lonely, but I can bear that too, now that I know I have been loved. That sheds a glory on my life . . . a glory."
His voice sank. She watched him turning the letter over in his hands, remembering . . . remembering. Then, with a gesture full of courtliness and charm, he held it out to her.
"Read it, my dear, now," he said. "Veux tu, toi?"
